A History of the Presidency - Finding the candidates

The recruitment of presidents has changed over time. The first presidents
were those who helped to found the nation. Washington's role is
memorialized forever as the "Father of His Country" and as
"First in peace, first in war, and first in the hearts of his
countrymen." John Adams, the second chief executive, was already
known to fame as the "Atlas of Independence" for his
Herculean labors in the cause of liberty during the 1770s and 1780s. Then
followed a group of luminous Virginians: Jefferson, the third president,
was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence; Madison,
Jefferson's close friend, had earned the sobriquet "Father
of the Constitution," and James Monroe (1817–1825), who had
been wounded as a soldier in the War for Independence, and was said to
look like George Washington, is remembered as the "last of the
cocked hats"—the last president who wore the tricorne of the
Revolutionary era. Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe all had served as
secretary of state—Jefferson under Washington, Madison under
Jefferson, and Monroe under Madison. Consequently, the office of secretary
of state came to be regarded as preparation for the presidency and its
holder as next in line to the White House.

This pattern became a factor in the election of 1824 when Monroe's
second term in office was coming to an end. The three leading candidates
were Andrew Jackson of Tennessee who won 99 electoral votes, John Quincy
Adams of Massachusetts who won 84, and Henry Clay of Kentucky who won 37.
Because none of them had a majority, the House of Representatives had to
select the winner. Clay was in the position of president-maker because he
could choose to throw his support to either Jackson or Adams. Clay found
it congenial to side with Adams, and Adams was thereupon elected. Soon
afterward Adams made Clay his secretary of state. The Jackson supporters
were outraged, shouting "bargain and corruption." They
believed that with that appointment Adams had "paid off"
Clay by putting him in succession to the presidency—in accordance
with the established practice since the beginning of the office, with the
single exception of John Adams's presidency.

In his inaugural address, Adams admitted: "Less possessed of your
confidence in advance than any of my predecessors, I am deeply conscious
of the prospect that I shall stand more and oftener in need of your
indulgence." He got little of it: Jackson's backers during
the next four years waged a tireless campaign to avenge their man's
defeat. Many observers could see that the nature of politics was changing.
The older aristocratic view that leadership is to be found in an elite
class only was beginning to be supplanted by the notion that "the
people" must rule. Whereas only about 20 percent of the eligible
voters went to the polls in 1824, four years later the number had
quadrupled.

The Jacksonians, maintaining that they were the true successors of
Jefferson, called themselves Democratic-Republicans. Soon they shortened
the name to Democrats. They touted Jackson as "the people's
choice" and elected him in 1828. He had once said, "I know
what I am fit for. I can command a body of men in a rough way, but I am
not fit to be President." Nevertheless, on his inauguration day
hordes of his partisans overran the White House in their certainty that a
glorious new time for the nation was at hand. John Quincy Adams, still
smarting that Jackson had not called on him to pay his respects after his
election, refused to attend Jackson's oath-taking. A few years
later when Adams's alma mater, Harvard College, bestowed an
honorary doctor of laws degree on Jackson, Adams was incensed, calling his
successor "a barbarian who could not write a sentence of grammar
and hardly could spell his own name." Harvard's president
might have been speaking for the emerging new outlook when he responded to
Adams: "As the people have decided that this man knows laws enough
to be their ruler, it is not for Harvard College to maintain that they are
mistaken."

The age of Jackson commenced a new time in the history of the presidency,
for it was in the 1830s that what we call "public opinion"
began to form and to become an element in national politics.
"Public opinion" was not always easy to divine, but every
vote-seeker knew that somehow it was the pulse of the electorate. More and
more, politicians came to respond to the views of the people and to keep a
wet finger to the wind.